Happy, Healthy Mommy Blog

Tag Archives: phonics

My three-year old is working on mastering beginning word sounds. As his vocabulary and speech improves, he is able to associate more words. My toddler and his grandpa play a game where they take turns thinking of a word that starts with each letter of the alphabet. We made up a new game today!

I gave my toddler a sticky note with a letter on it – “A” then “B” and so on. He took the sticky note and together we looked for things around the house that started with that letter. Then he “stickied” the object by placing the sticky note on it. Some objects where a little challenging, such as the cat, but he tried! This game could be expanded to word ending sounds, middle word sounds, rhyming words or the entire word. Of course, in the end there are stickies all over the house but that’s ok with me!

Apples (decorative), coconuts (a lamp made out of coconuts), and eggs (hard-boiled)! Just a few of the beginning sound words that were stickied today!

Counting bears (purchased used on Amazon) are a great activity and can be used in many different ways. When I first introduced them to B, I only put out a few bears and only two colors. Now, at 2 1/2 years old, he gets all of them. And, yes, they go all over the place. I think he enjoys the sounds of them falling and the feel of them as he mixed them around. At this age, he enjoys when I have the bear “talk” to him. He smiles and helps the bears find their “home” in the right color cup. We count and sort the bears. I ask him to hand me a certain number of bears or we see how many can ride the train or fit in the airplane. We do basic addition – one yellow bear + two blue bears = ? Although I also give him plenty of time to do whatever he wants with the bears, we usually do these activities together.

LETTERS / PHONICS: NAME & BEGINNING LETTERS SOUNDS

B also enjoyed pouring the alphabet into an empty orange juice container and opening and closing the lid. A BIG hit was spelling out his name was magnet or wooden pieces. And he does very well with sounding out the beginning of words and matching the letters. I hold two objects, such as animals, in my hand ask which starts with a certain letter. You can do this anywhere – like playing eye spy. It’s a great game for the car or, in our case recently, the subway.

Half way through the third week of June. B (almost 27 months) and I have been enjoying new activities together. As described in my last two posts, I’m striving for a balance between structure and exploration type learning. The free-form exploration type learning seems to be winning out. For example, we are working on basic phonics and early reading. I am following a simple phonics book called “First Reader” by Phyllis Schlafly. You can find it on Amazon. We used this book first as another tool for learning letters and now we are working on putting two letters together. The first exercise is placing “M” in front on the vowels. B thinks it’s fun and seems excited to read. The fun went to a whole new level when I added wooden tile letters and let him take “MA” on a ride in his excavator. He wanted to do it with all the vowels and made the sounds on his own without me asking. You can see some of the pictures of this activity below.

In my first picture B is chasing bubbles. We played with small and big bubbles at school and made tornados in soda bottles filled with colored water. You just spin the bottle around really fast and it makes a tornado in the water. We are having fun with simple science projects such as these this summer. We have also transferred water between cups in a straw like a hummingbird would sip nectar from a flower. Yesterday we picked a maple leaf and placed it in a glass of water with red food coloring. We are now watching the food dye transfer into the leaf. B also likes to discuss how water moves from the sky, into the ground, and up into trees. I think he gets it. Maybe.

You can see some other Montessori inspired shelf work ideas below. Also, I am doing a video each week and posting it on my YouTube account. You should be able to find them simply by searching for Adrienne Gilman on YouTube but here is a link anyway to my last video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnqdSX3uXm0

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Thanks for visiting! Forcing the Bloom is about learning to let life unfold in its own natural and beautiful way without forcing the "petals" of life open too quickly. Check out our Montessori activities, recipes, and ideas for around the home.